Mardy Colliery was a coal mine located in the South Wales village of Maerdy (Welsh: Y Maerdy), in the Rhondda valley, located in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, and within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, Wales, lying at the head of the Rhondda Fach Valley. Opened in 1875, it closed in December 1990.
Maerdy derives it names from a large farmhouse located on the banks of the River Fechan, which became used as the local meeting place for both court matters and worship. Maerdy is the Welsh language word for mayors house, and hence its name.[1]
While others areas of the South Wales coalfield had been exploited upt to 50years earlier, due to the scarcity and difficult access conditions of Rhondda Fawr, it remained largely undeveloped. But the demmaned for steam coal drove develeopment, and in 1873 Mordecai Jones from Brecon and now residing in Nantmelyn, purchased the mineral rights around the farmhouse and its surrunding lands from Crawshay Bailey for £122,000. After raising additional capital by forming a partnership with JR Cobb, the winitial works began in 1875.[1]
In 1876 they struck the Abergorky vein of coal in the pits' no.1 shaft. Proving the mine viable by increasing production to 100tonnes/day, Maerdy No.2 pit was sunk in 1876. After connecting the pit to the Taff Vale Railway and transporting the first coal to Cardiff Docks in 1877, they sank Maerdy No.2 pit was sunk in 1893. Now leasing the entire mine works to Locket's Merthyr Company in the same year, they increased production from 30,000 tons/annum in 1879 to over 160,000 tons/annum by 1884, and divided the mine into two separate districts: the East known as "Rhondda," and the West known as "Aberdare."[1] By this time this lines link to the Taff Vale Railway had become the mainline to Porth and onwards to Cardiff. Maerdy No.4 was completed in 1914.[1]
In 1932 Bwllfa and Cwmaman Collieries, part of the Welsh Associated Collieries, took control of Mardy. After WAC merged with the coal interests of Powell Duffryn in 1935 to form Powell Duffryn Associated Collieries Limited, the colliery was completely closed. Reopeneing in 1938, it was greatly effected by the suspension of coal exports to Europe at the start of World War 2, and hence closed in 1940.
Nationalised in 1947 but remaining closed, in 1949, the National Coal Board announced a £7million investment in Mardy, based around developing the No3 and No.4 shafts to access 100 million tons of coal in the 5ft seam, estimated sufficient to last one hundred years.[1] Transformed into one of the most modern pits in the United Kingdom, winding became fully electric, new extended railways sidings and a coal washing plant on the surface built on the site of the former No1 and No.2 shafts,[2] and new underground roads linking the mine to Bwllfa Colliery in the Cynon Valley.[1] After the colliery band was disbanded, in 1978 the mine adopted the local Tylorstown silver band, which resultantly became the "Tylorstown & Mardy Colliery Band."[3]
The 1984/5 Miners Strike closed the mine for a year, and by 1986, with all coal being raised at Tower Colliery,[2] the two mines were effectively working as one coalfield system. The last coal was raised in December 1990, after which friends were allowed down to pit bottom to collect souvenier pieces of the 5ft seam, and then sing carols in the canteen. The Tylorstown silver band then followed a procession to the Welfare Hall, where a "wake" was held. Of the remaining 300 workers at the pit, only 17 chose to transfer to other collieries.[1]
By 1885, the colliery was employing 961 men, 200 on the night shift and 761 on the day shift. At approximately 2.40 p.m. on Wednesday 23rd December 1885, with 750 men below ground, a loud report was heard above ground, and a column of smoke and dust then bellowed from the upcast shaft.[1]
A rescue team led by Mr. William Thomas, a director of Lockett's Merthyr Steam Coal Company, immediately descended. Finding the workers in the West district had survived, they also joined the rescue effort. The team found a group of 30 men and boys on the East district, who having been working 120 yards (110 m) below the explosion, had survived. But bodies were readily found, and with due care for the safety of the rescuers, it took until the following Sunday to complete the recovery of all 81 bodies: 63 from suffocation; 18 from burns and violence. The funerals for the victims were held at Ferndale and Llanwonno cemeteries, on the following Saturday, Sunday and Monday.[1]
After the Coroners Inquest, held at the Maerdy Hotel on the 12th-18th January, 1886, the barrister A.G.C.Liddell was appointed to submit a report to the Mines Inspector, and hence to the Minister and both houses of Parliament. In his report, Liddell stated that:[1]
We find that an explosion of gas occurred in the Rhondda District of the Maerdy Colliery on the 23rd December 1885, whereby Daniel Williams lost his life, but how or where the gas ignited, sufficient evidence has not been produced to enable us to determine. We are, however, convinced that it did not occur from shot firing in the hard heading
Liddell's Report was highly critical of the safety procedures, which he concluded were not carried out to the specifications of The Coal Mines Regulation Act 1872, evidence by: no barometer kept in a conspicuous position at the entrance to the mine; positioning of lamp stations, hence allowing naked flames to travel through the workings; removal and watering of the coal dust that built up in the mine, which Liddell observed was carried out in a "desultory way" and was not done in a "sufficiently systematic character."[1]
Liddell concluded that the most likely cause of the explosion was from a defective appliance of the shot-firing regulations, were by it had been normal practise to ignore the blue-flame warning of the lamps. Secondly, only the miners within a Template:50 distance were removed from the immediate workings, and not the entire district as the regulations required.[1]
Liddell concluded that the course of the blast from the explosion was approximately one mile long, and eminated in an area called the Northwest dip. Stone masons were working in the area to reduce the height of a roack fall so that it did not become a gas collection point, and had been using an open-flamed "comet" lamp. Liddell concludes that either the shot-firing dislodged gas above the arch onto to the "comet," or the that the lamp was raised too high and came into contact with coal damp.[1]
Both theories Liddell accepts in his report can not be scientificaally proven, and further the extent of the balst does not explain its ferocity. He therefore concludes that however the blast occured, that it was the accumulation of coal damp and coal dust throughout the working from poor watering procedure that created such an explosive situation to occur. He therefore recommended two changes to the coal mining regulations:[1]
Following the submission of the report and a further inspection, the mine was reopened in January 1886.[1]
From its opening, Mardy had a reputation as a place for militants and left-wing political extremists, particularly Communism. Well know communist Arthur Horner was employed as a checkweighter, who at the time of his election was serving a prison sentence for refusing to fight in the First World War. In the 1926 General Strike, its militancy lead to the mineworkers lodge being suspended from the South Wales Miners Federation, and expelled from 1930. During the epriod after the general strike, the South Wales Daily News first applied the term Little Moscow when describing Maerdy. As a result, and with a slump in the demand for steam coal, production at Mardy did not resume until late 1927.[1]
During the 1984/85 miners strike, the pit staying true to its militant heritage, sent men as flying pickets all over the country; only two token picket lines were ever need at Mardy itself, as no Mardy miner would ever cross a picket line. The wives formed the first Women's Support Groups in the South Wales Coalfield, organising food collection and distribution, and joining their husbands on the picket lines. The miners returned to work on the 5th March, 1985.[1]
, in the Rhondda valley.
Location:
Maerdy, Rhondda Fach Valley
Sunk:
1875
Closed:
1990
The first pit was sunk at Mardy in 1875 and the second a year later into the Abergorchi Seam with the first coal being raised in 1877 - a third pit was sunk in 1893. It was the 1926 Lock-out that gave Mardy the name 'Little Moscow' due to the militant actions of the workers there, and following the industrial strife of the 1920s employed 120 men on the surface and 880 underground in 1935. Following decades of restructuring and redevelopment, by the time of the Miner's Strike the colliery was struggling to reach former output and was diverted to Tower Colliery. Mardy was the last deep mine to have worked in the Rhondda Valleys and was closed by British Coal in December 1990.